Folks from Taylorville don't have to make many trips to Springfield without noticing the white house between Taylorville and Sharpsburg, sitting at an angle to Route 29, nestled among a grove of trees. Most striking is the triple row of sycamore trees lining the two lanes of the drive. Their white branches gleam against a blue winter sky, just as bright as a jet trail far above them. I've driven by the house countless times, enjoying the picture created by its surrounding trees and appreciating homeowners who must enjoy trees as much as I do.
A little research resulted in the discovery that the current residents are Louis and Joy Laughlin, so I made a phone call and talked with Louis. "We bought the house from Tom Harmon in 1990," he explained. The two sisters who lived there previous to the Harmons nurtured an orchard there years before. "James Hugh Angleton stripped the house out in the mid-1950's," says Louis, "for his sisters Gladys and Amy Angleton. The front part dates to the 1870's." The sisters were not married and Amy ran a restaurant called Amy's Cupboard in Taylorville. Their brother James spent much of his life in Italy operating the National Cash Register franchise there. His career also included work for the Office of Strategic Services (O.S.S.—a pre-cursor of the C.I.A.). James Hugh's son, James Jesus Angleton, worked for the C.I.A., as chief of counter-intelligence—but let's get back to the trees.
Louis recalls that there were about eighty apple and pear trees left in the orchard when he and Joy moved in. There are very few apples left today and a few pear trees that produce every year without fail. "And in a year like last year, with plenty of moisture, the branches of the pear trees are nearly bent to the ground," Louis says. As the fruit trees were lost to age, he began planting black walnuts in the orchard. "I've put in about 200 walnuts back there. If you plant the walnuts about sixteen feet apart, they won't bear many nuts at all. Then, as they get larger, they can be thinned out a bit." He's also managed to add a couple of English walnut trees, now with trunks nearly four inches in diameter. "A woman in Kincaid had them at her yard sale, so I thought I'd give them a try." He likes the black walnuts though, because they are native Illinois trees.
A drought in the early 1990's resulted in the loss the honey locust trees that Tom Harmon had planted. "We have one locust tree that came up from the roots of an older tree, but it seems to struggle," Louis says. "They were beautiful trees." He and Joy also treasure some very large pin oaks, and they have planted several sugar maples and a large number of pine trees on their seven-and-a-half-acre property. He doesn't even mind the unpleasant chore of mowing around the old female gingko growing there. "My wife likes plants and trees, so we just try to keep going with what we have here." he says, by way of explanation.
Louis works with nature when and where he can, realizing the importance of declining and dead trees as wildlife habitat. "In the back of the property, I don't get in a big hurry to take a tree down if it has died. The owls and hawks seem to appreciate these trees, so I usually try to leave things alone a little bit back there."
The ice storm of December, 2006, put these tree-lovers to the test. Returning home from a trip, Louis and Joy weren't even able to get in the drive. "I wound up buying a tractor and end-loader to deal with the mess. I put in about fifty hours on the tractor and another fifty with a chainsaw." A neighbor brought three hired hands to help and Louis called on Larry Langen from Morrisonville, to bring a boom truck to cut the overhead damage out. I asked about the sycamores, which are listed in the intermediate category when it comes to resistance to ice and storm damage. "They dropped a lot of wood," he answers. "Now, it's good wood for campfires because it really burns down, leaving hardly any ash. There was plenty of it, though."
The broad maple-like leaves of a sycamore may have led to early English colonists to name the large native tree for the English sycamore maple. The sycamore trees of the Bible are actually a type of fig tree. Native to North America, the tree's botanical name is platanus occidentalis. It typically grows to about 100 feet, sometimes exceeding 120 feet, making it the continent's largest native broadleaf tree. In Landscaping with Native Trees, author and noted Illinois conservationist Guy Sternberg relates the story of a sycamore that had the distinction of being the largest tree of any species ever measured in North America east of California. It grew along the Wabash River in southern Indiana, with two trunks, the largest of which measured 15.5 feet in diameter. It stood 168 feet tall. The property-owner grew tired of people coming to see the tree and cut it down in the late 1880's.
American sycamores have been called "ghost trees," probably due to the brilliant white branches in the upper part of the crown, caused by a bark characteristic known as exfoliation. The bark pattern is reminiscent of camouflage, patterned in tan, grey and white. The trees can often be found along stream beds, growing very fast—some say 70 feet in 17 years!—if the tree is happy in its site. It is a messy tree, dropping bark, its button-like seedheads, and branches from anthracnose infections in cool, wet spring weather. All in all, the sycamore is probably best-suited in rural areas, although a beautiful specimen may be forgiven by a tree-hugger. There is a lovely old sycamore on West Adams Street, with a crown that doesn't show noticeable damage from anthracnose. Passersby in winter are sure to notice the branches of a sycamore, as they fairly sparkle among the darker branches of other deciduous trees.
The London planetree (plantanus acerifolia) is a hybrid of the American native and the oriental planetree (p. orientalis). Resistant to disease, this stately tree is at home in urban areas, being the most common tree to be found in Brooklyn, New York. Beautiful plantings of these planetrees line park walk-ways in London and other European cities, similar to the trees lining the drive at the Laughlin house. Although these descendants do not feature the bright white branches of true sycamores, their bark is still characteristic of the camouflage look sported by the parent.
Winter can be a challenge for those of us trying to get better acquainted with the trees around us, but the American sycamore is an easy friend to spot, lighting up the wooded areas along streams and rivers. Hopefully, it will challenge you to take a closer look at its neighbors, spotting bark features and branch patterns that are just a little bit out of the ordinary. In that case, you may want to be on the look-out for a good field guide to trees, one that shows close-up photos of bark, fruits, and twigs. Or, just enjoy the trees now and anticipate the green days to come.
